The Iron Hand of Mars

LII

Helvetius made a cursory attempt to help me rise. 'Didn't do too well there!'

I shook him off. 'Anyone who thinks his winning words stand a better chance than mine can go and try his luck in the tower!'

The scathing quips dried up.

Two of the lady's relations had been deputed to relocate us in a long stockade made of twiggy hurdles that still looked as if they were growing. This must be where she kept live gifts prior to their ritual butchering. They herded us over there, and penned us in. It was occupied already. The specimen we found huddled in a corner seemed unlikely to propitiate the hoary god whom Lentullus and I had seen in the grove.

'Oh look everyone, we've found Dubnus!'

Our lost pedlar had come in for a heavy battering. He must have been bruised in a rich pattern, then some days later somebody had gone over him with the deliberate aim of filling in any gaps that had shown between the previous contusions. 'What was this for?'

'Being a Ubian.'

'Don't lie! You came selling the Bructeri information about us. They must have used the information, but shown you their contempt!'

He looked as if he expected us to attack him too, but we made a point of explaining that we never hit people whose tribes were officially Romanised. 'Not even two-timing ones, Dubnus.'

'Not even runaway interpreters who skip just when we're needing them.'

'Not even Ubian bastards who sell us into captivity.'

'Not even you, Dubnus.'

He said something in his own tongue, which we did not need an interpreter to understand.

What happened next was a surprise. Hardly had Veleda's shambling adherents roped up the wattle and left us to ponder, than they were there again removing their feeble wisps of lashing and pulling open the exit fence.

'Mithras! The witch has changed her mind. We're all getting nice new cloaks and going to be guests of honour at the feast…'

'Save your breath to cool your gruel, centurion. That one won't change her mind.'

The lanks dragged us all out. The sight of Dubnus seemed to remind them that they might enjoy feeling big. He was too mashed already to be worth making him squeal again, so they started giving the odd thump to Helvetius and me. When we shoved them aside angrily, they joined the trend and picked on the centurion's servant instead. This time Helvetius decided he wasn't having it and squared up to defend his man. We braced ourselves for trouble – and trouble duly arrived. Not what we expected, though.

First Veleda popped back out of her stone retreat.

A trumpet sounded. 'Jupiter Best and Greatest – that's one of ours!'

It was a short, slow call on a clear but subdued instrument. Its mournful tremor sounded Roman, yet not quite right. It came from the forest somewhere close. It was blown on the twisted bronze horn which sentries use, and the call was recognisably the signal for the second night watch. It was four hours early tonight.

Then Tigris ran into the clearing, went straight across to Veleda, and lay down with his nose between his paws.

I hardly had time to guess that the prophetess must have spied the embassy from her signal-tower when someone else arrived. It was Helena's younger brother. I had long suspected this character of harbouring deep qualities, but it was the first time he had shown us his talent for makeshift spectacle.

He clip-clopped into the clearing with Orosius as an outrider. Neither of them had the trumpet, which subtly implied someone else did (they must have left it propped against a tree). They looked good; one or both of them had spent all afternoon combing plumes and buffing bronze. Helena's brother was tackling the Bructeri as if he had an army of fifteen thousand waiting down the road. There was no road, but Camillus Justinus gave the impression he might have had one built for him. There was no army either; we knew that.

For a man who had spent the last month under canvas in the wilderness, his rig was immaculate. His air of restrained bravado was also pitched perfectly. He had the best of our Gallic horses. He must have raided our supplies for olive oil and burnished the beast so that even its hooves gleamed with their unorthodox marinade. If the horse was well groomed, so was he. Somehow, in the depths of the forest, he and Orosius had managed to shave. They made the rest of us look like the riff-raff with fleas and funny accents who can never get a seat at the races even when the gatekeeper has gone to lunch and left his ten-year-old brother as bouncer.

Justinus wore the entire panoply of his tribunal rank, plus a few details he had invented for himself: a white tunic hemmed in purple; spanking greaves with ornate gilding; a thrusting horsehair plume atop a helmet that had a shine which flashed round the forest every time he moved his head. The breastplate which sat over his heavily fringed leathers looked three times as bright as usual. Looped up around its heroically modelled torso our lad wore his heavy -crimson cloak with a debonair swing. In the crook of one arm he was carrying – in an extremely relaxed manner – some sort of ceremonial stave, a novelty he had apparently copied from formal statues of Augustus. His expression had that Emperor's noble calm, and if the noble calm was disguising fright not even his friends could tell.

He rode halfway across the clearing, slowly enough to give the prophetess a good stare at his turnout. He dismounted. Orosius accepted his reins – and his stave – with silent deference.- Justinus approached Veleda with a firm spring in his tribunal boots, then swept off his helmet as a sign of respect to her. The Camilli were a tall family, especially in triple-soled military footware; for once she was looking a Roman directly in the eyes. The eyes she would be seeing now were big, brown, modest, and momentously sincere.

Justinus paused. He coloured slightly: nice effect. Removing his gilded pot had allowed the lady to receive the full benefit of his frank admiration and boyish reserve. The sensitive eyes must be working their magic, and he matched the deep stillness of the prophetess with his own steadiness.

Then he said something. He seemed to address. Veleda confidentially, yet the pitch of his voice carried everywhere.

We knew the man. We knew the voice. But none of us had the slightest idea what he said to the prophetess.

Camillus Justinus had spoken in her own tongue.

He did it with the lilting fluency I remembered from his Greek. It took Veleda longer than she could have liked before she recovered; then she inclined her head. Justinus spoke to her again; this time she glanced in our direction. He must have asked her a question. She considered her answer, then abruptly replied.

'Thank you,' said Justinus very civilly, in Latin this time, as if paying her the compliment of assuming she would understand him too. 'Then I'll greet my friends first, please…' He was not asking her permission; it was a statement of intent. Then he turned back to her with a good-mannered apology: 'My name is Camillus Justinus, by the way.'

His face remained impassive as he walked across to us. We took our cue from him. He shook hands with every one of us, in a measured and grave style. With the eyes of the entire Bructian gathering upon him, Justinus did little more than speak our names, while we muttered as much information as we could.

'Marcus Didius.'

'She claims to be just a woman who dwells in the tower with her thoughts.'

'Helvetius.'

'Somebody should give her something else to think about!' Helvetius could not resist this typical shaft. Ascanius.'

'We're all due for a nasty death, sir.'

'Probus.'

'Tribune, what have you said to her?'

'Sextus. We're going to talk things over quietly; let me see what I can do. Lentullus!'

When he had greeted us all, his bright eyes met mine directly. 'Well, you've left me everything to do here! I even had to blow the bloody trumpet for myself.'

He was using the joke to hide some anxiety; behind the glint of amusement his face looked sad. I suddenly stepped up to him, pulling out the amulet I had been given in Vetera; he saw what it was and ducked his head to receive it round his own neck. 'If it's any help, a contact told me Veleda may be yearning for some decent conversation… That's for Helena. Watch yourself.'

'Marcus!' he embraced me like a brother, then I took his helmet from him. He walked bravely away from us.

He went back to Veleda. He was a shy man, who had learned to answer challenges alone. Veleda was waiting for him like a woman who thought she was likely to regret something.

I whipped round towards the pedlar, the only one among us whom the tribune had pointedly ignored. 'What did he say to her, Dubnus?'

Dubnus cursed, but answered me. 'He said: "You must be Veleda. I bring you greetings from my Emperor, and messages of peace…" '

'You're holding back! He made an offer – that was obvious.'

Without bothering to question what I had in mind, our reliable Helvetius stomped up behind the pedlar and hoicked his arms back in a wrestling hold that bit persuasively. Dubnus gasped, 'He said: "I see my comrades are your hostages. I offer myself in exchange." '

I had known it. Justinus dashed into danger with the same offhand courage his sister showed when she decided impatiently that someone had to be businesslike. 'So what did Veleda answer him?'

"Come into my tower!"'

What the pedlar said was true. The moment Justinus reached her, Veleda strode back towards her monument. He followed. Then we watched our innocent tribune walk into the tower alone with her.